Block by Block Weekly Newsletter #15
News of the Week
🤯 Coinbase to Become U.S-regulated Blockchain Securities Trading Venue
Coinbase announced this week that it is on track to operate a regulated broker-dealer pending approval by federal authorities. The approval would allow Coinbase to offer blockchain-based securities on their platform.
This is all being enabled by Coinbases acquisitions of Keystone Capital Corp., Venovate Marketplace, Inc., and Digital Wealth LLC.
👍 SEC Appoints First Crypto Czar
Valerie Szczepanik will serve as associate director of the Division of Corporation Finance and senior advisor for digital assets and innovation. According to the SEC, Valerie will "coordinate efforts across all SEC Divisions and Offices regarding the application of U.S. securities laws to emerging digital asset technologies and innovations, including initial coin offerings and cryptocurrencies."
🤔 Investment Giant Fidelity Issues Crypto Exchange Job Offers
The firm is looking for a DevOps System Engineer “to help engineer, create and deploy a Digital Asset exchange to both a public and private cloud”. According to another job offer, Fidelity also plans to offer “first-in-class custodian services for Bitcoin and other digital currencies".
Coinbase announced that they will be opening an office in Japan and appointing Nao Kitazwa as the CEO. Nao is the former COO of Money Design and former investment banker at Morgan Stanley Japan.
It's curious that Coinbase is launching in Japan considering rival exchange Kraken pulled its services from the country in April citing rising costs of business.
🏦 Circle Aims to Expand Into Regulated Banking
Crypto platform Circle plans to seek a federal banking license to provide more services to its customers. It also intends to pursue registration as a brokerage and trading venue with the SEC so that it can trade in tokens deemed to be securities.
Sounds like Coinbase isn't the only platform aiming to become a 'crypto bank'.
⛏️ Jihan Wu of Bitmain Considers an IPO
Jihan Wu, co-founder of the worlds largest producer of crypto mining chips, is open to listing Bitmain in Hong Kong or an overseas market with U.S. dollar-denominated shares. The IPO would allow early investors such as Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital a chance to cash out their shares in the company.
🇲🇹 Binance Opens Bank Account in Malta
After previously announcing plans to move to Malta and offer fiat-to-crypto trading on it's platform, Binance has opened a bank account in the country which brings the company one step closer to realising this goal.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao hopes that fiat-crypto trading on Binance will launch in Malta within the year.
😮 R3 is Apparently Running Out of Money
R3 is a blockchain platform being built specifically for enterprise. This week, it has come to light that the startup, who have so far raised $107 million, is running out of money. Employees of the firm have questioned a corporate culture in which executives and consultants splurged on flying to frequent meetings around the world and R3 CEO David Rutters salary has been described as being "outrageous".
✌️ New York State Department Approves Trading of Privacy-protecting Cryptocurrency
Specifically, Gemini was authorized by the Department of Financial Services to offer trading of Zcash in New York. Read the full press release here.
Project Updates
SpankChain's Crypto Camsite has now entered public beta and the SpankChain knowledge base has also gone live.
Greg Hysen from the 0x Protocol team gives us an overview of all the work the team has been doing during the month of May.
You can now store your XMR on Ledger's range of hardware wallets.
The creators of Trust Wallet announced their new Trust Platform this week which aims to be an Ethereum ecosystem for any mobile device.
Totle Public Beta Live on MainNet
Totle allows you to buy and sell ERC-20 tokens across multiple decentralized exchanges.
Loi Luu outlines some key takeaways from the Kyber Network 2.0 announcements including a new version of KyberSwap and cross-chain trade.
The update brings offer channels, scalability improvements, improved Arbiter selection and more.
The Aion Network has been added to the list of blockchains that the F2Pool mining pool supports.
The dYdX Margin Trading Protocol is now on the Kovan Testnet.
Qfellowship Program Open for Applications
The Qfellowship Program is the backbone of ConcourseQ, the original ICO due diligence community. You can now apply to become a Qfellow (and even get paid for your work)!
Microsofts Azure Platform now allows you to spin up an AionNode with a click of a button thanks to an app integration on the platform.
Dether Rebrand and New Website
Dether are rebranding their image and have launched their new website this week.
Project Spotlight
The Graph - Scalable Queries for a Decentralized Future
The Graph is a protocol for building decentralized applications quickly on Ethereum and IPFS using GraphQL.
The Token Engineering Wiki aims to create a body of theory, practice, tools and a sense of responsibility collectively as a community in a decentralized, permissionless, open-source fashion that all can contribute to and all can use.
Open Bazaar - Buy and Sell Freely
OpenBazaar is a different way to do online commerce. It’s a peer to peer application that doesn’t require middlemen, which means no fees & no restrictions.
Crypto Drama & Controversy
EOS Token Distribution Is Incredibly Centralized
EOS justified it's year-long ICO by stating that it was meant to "fairly distribute" tokens to the community. Well, turns out that at least 75 of the top 100 addresses are holding part of 250 million EOS tokens (of a total 1 billion tokens). Block.one (the company that developed the EOS software) holds around 100 million themselves. Click the heading for a further breakdown of the distribution.
Yes, that's right - John McAfee has decided to run for POTUS in 2020. He believes this move will "best service the crypto community by providing a campaign platform for us". Unfortunately, I don't believe he's joking.
Awesome Tweets
- List of Projects Working on state/payment channels
- ETHBuenosAires Interview Thread
- Cross-coin Price Correlation
- Most Underrated Crypto Teams
- The EOS Mainnet Launch is a Mess
Random Bits
Blog Posts:
- The 0x Mission and Values
- Making Sense of Web 3
- Crafting New Value with Existing Tokens
- Nature 2.0
- Why Stablecoins Matter: Part 1
- Lisk - The Mafia Blockchain
- Ethereum Will Be the Backbone of the New Internet
- A Crash Course in Behavioral Economics Terms for Cryptocurrencies
Videos:
Misc:
Personal Updates
Website Updates
New research added to the site:
- Ethereum Will Be the Backbone of the New Internet
- A Crash Course in Behavioral Economics Terms for Cryptocurrencies
- The Emergence of Cryptoeconomic Primitives
New resources added to the site:
Feedback
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Disclaimer: None of the information outlined in this piece should be taken as investment advice. Please click here for more information.